The Jazz are sporting a 5 game winning streak going into Friday night's match against Memphis (Memphis smoked em by 22 pts). The are currently 1/2 game out of first place in the Northwest division.​

Utah has inserted Collins into the starting lineup and moved Memo to PF until Boozer returns (apprx 2 weeks). They have also demoted Deron Williams to the bench.
The challange will be to keep the Jazz off the offensive glass.
Kililenko is one of tleague leaders in blocked shots (3.18)
Memo is their leading scorer @ 17.9 and rebounder @ 9.10
They typically play a controlled half court game keeping opponents scoring down. They do have difficulty on defense. When Kirilenko goes for blocks it often leaves his man for offensive rebounds.
Memo has a +/- rating of -2.3
However Memo is one of the league leaders in crunch time efficiency

Game Preview

This will be a challange for the bench as the Jazz have key reserves including Devin Brown, Deron Williams, Matt Harpring and Greg Ostertag.
The key to winning will be to keep Kirilenko out around the perimiter on defense as their interior defense is lacking quickness.
The Pistons must stay tight on Okur around the perimiter.
Sloan's strategy is similar to LB or Pop's; make the extra pass for the high % shots.
The Pistons gaurds have a size and skills advantage over the Jazz gaurds. Look for them to break down the defense and create easy opportunities for Ben & co.

They have a back-back comming in from Memphis. Lot easier for the Pistons who stayed home.

Utah crushed us on the boards last time. Pistons have been rebounding a lot better lately and you know they are aware of what happened last game with them.

Pistons 108 Jazz 84

Click to expand...

Utah was blown away by Memphis, and so their starters all played light minutes. And you know Sloan was chewing them a new one the whole flight to Detroit. Memo has a big chip on his shoulders, and I don't think anything fazes AK. Could be trouble.

Flip coached for a loss. First he brought Evans in. Bad news. Our starters had built up a pretty good lead. But the game is played for 48 minutes. Or 53 in this case. Our bench did horrible with Evans in there. It briefly held its own after Evans sat, but then Flip compounded his mistake by pulling his bench to early in the 2nd quarter. I know Flip is an experienced coach, but he certainly needs to learn the following: you do not win, or lose, the game in the 2nd quarter. This was a back to back. The starters needed time off the floor. Time they did not get. And then Flip just further compounded the problem by playing the bench way too little in the 2nd half. No Arroyo. Delfino gave some rest to Tay then Rip, and that was it. Sheed was not doing his normal rotation as Dyess was in early in both halves due to foul trouble. If Sheed had not been in foul trouble, this game would have been even worse. With Sheed in foul trouble, the coach was forced to give him proper rest, and Sheed was able to give us some energy there in the 4th to keep us close.

Our players were visibly tired. Leaning against the supports. Sitting on tables whenever they could get off their feet a moment. CB was completely leg dead by the overtime, and Utah started 3 non-starters in that overtime. Guess which team was fresher?

CB rallied there for a bit with what he had left. Just not enough. Tay hit several outside shots in this game, including one with 2 minutes left in regulation and one in OT. Nice to see the clutch shooting. Rip was hitting shots. But not much late in the game. Pretty tanked.

Ben got some rebounds, but all in all, we had the same problem as last time, giving up too many offensive boards. Flip is being interviewed, making up his excuses. Sure, they played aggressive. We missed shots. How about all the dead legs out there. Get a clue coach.

Delfino did not do any scoring, but he was around the boards a lot. Dyess hit some shots, and made 5-6 free throws. Arroyo did not do much. Evans did absolutely zero. Darko did not play. One more game toward not being prepared for the playoffs. Flip, if you can't start getting prepared for the playoffs, please at least start now to make up some excuses at least that are unique.

Lee predicted it correctly it was trouble. The last time we lost to them they were blown out the game before. Of course this was a back-back.

Kerilinco and Palacio played great. Memo grabbed a lot of boards. Most of all Utah actually made the clutch plays. I am not sure what was up with Billups. He was trying to do too much. Not passing enough, trying to di too much. As in the last play in Regulation the guy almost gets triple teamed and fluffs up a shot. I don't if he was just tired since Arroyo did not play much or if the MVP talk got to his head a bit.

Team has to get better at rebounding. One thing I miss about the old coach is how he challenged everyone to chip in.

Yes, forget the 70 wins. I repeat what Joe said on the other board--not a worthy goal. But, Lee has a point. Not about Evans--he didn't play much at all and we all know his limitiations. But we have trouble on a back to back and the only solution is to play the bench on back to backs. A bigger issue is that Billips (and sometimes Rip) try to go one on one when we get into trouble. Forget the MVP talk. We are only good when we run the offense. We don't have great one on one guys.

IMO the 70 game talk was a far reach anyhow. We have almost as much chance of reaching 70 as we did before today.

Personally, I'd be tickled pink with 65.

Blame it on Evans. Blame it on Flip. Whatever.

Did anyone here really expect this 26-5 start? Few people dispute that they are the best team in basketball. People need to remember that the other teams want to win too. This is not the Harlem Globetrotters playing the Washington Generals for 82 games.

These guys win better than 5 out of every 6 games they play.

Losing sucks. Sorry, but we'll just have to deal with it 2 or 3 times a month.

Think about it...they lost less games in the last two month than the Lions.

ohh please, don't blame Flip for every freaking loss on the schedule. Hindsight is 20/20. You can't predict that we are going to go on a huge drought after going on an offensive tear in the first quarter. And you say that Flip should have kept the bench in longer in the 2nd quarter, but the fact is that the bench was in when our 14 point lead dropped to about 2 points. Arroyo is not capable of running the offense, and he brings down the entire team with him. It's not Flip's fault that Arroyo HAS to play at least SOME time (unless you want Chauncey play 48 minutes, or 53 in this case). You know Flip sees it because he has made a habit of playing Chauncey they entire 2nd half. And frankly, I don't blame him. If he puts in Arroyo and we blow the lead he gets blamed for it anyways, so he has to take the chance on keeping Chauncey in.

Flip also didn't force Sheed to get absolutely dominated on the boards by Memo. The offensive glass was where this game ended. That's an effort thing from the entire team.

I'm with the Prince. The team just played like crap. And the schedule hasn't been at all tough the past week, so the whole "team is tired" argument falls flat. What they are is complacent. They've piled up wins without maximum effort rebounding or playing D, and now they're assuming they can always do that against lower-echelon teams.

Too many shortcuts: settling for jump shots, counting on our big men to cover for sloppy defense, failing to block out, waiting until the last five minutes to win the game. It would be nice if Mr. MVP actually got fired up about it and showed leadership, but the usual pattern in past years is that it doesn't change until Ben gets mad. So I hope he gets mad soon.

that was a terrible call by flip for the last play of the game. why would he run sheed and chauncey's bread and butter play with ben wallace??? everybody in the arena knew ben's man would double chauncey. if flip had run that play with sheed the defense would have had to play billups honest. but instead he had to dribble around a double team to get open then try to get up a shot after the clock ran down.

i do agree somewhat with lee. evans is not "earning" minutes in my book. delfino is simply outplaying him. evans is not what he was billed to be. he almost made me spill my pop when he dribbled the ball out of bounds. he shouldn't be taking any minutes away from tay, rip or delfino.

this was a game where we needed sheed. but thanks to a few carefully placed bs calls he was on the bench with foul trouble. our outside shots weren't falling and we had nobody to go inside to. flip really bothers me with this. he will let chauncey, tay and rip fire away missing and missing but will never put a bench player in. a bench player could do no worse than they were out there. give them a little extended rest and show them that thier playing time is not guaranteed and maybe we'll see a little bit more effort before the 4th quarter.

i was happy to see memo do well against us. he was always one of my favorite players. that 3 in overtime really is what killed us.

i do agree somewhat with lee. evans is not "earning" minutes in my book.

Click to expand...

When Lindsey comes back, this may change. Then again, maybe not. FYI, the only folks worrying about earning minutes are DMC fans. Evans was +5 until Arroyo came in and stagnated the offense.

bball jay said:

i was happy to see memo do well against us. he was always one of my favorite players. that 3 in overtime really is what killed us.

Click to expand...

I think Milt Palacio of "Toronto Raptors" fame getting two huge baskets because we can't perimeter defend is what killed the Pistons. They were within one possession until Milt went all Michael Jordan on the Pistons.